Kay Redfield Jamison, author of the autobiography An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Jamison, 1995), is a 51 year old White female. She was born into a military family and moved around the world and the United States until age 15, when her father retired from service and took a job in California, taking his family with him. Jamison continues her education at a new high school where she struggles with the transition to a new location and lifestyle and changing dynamics within her family as her father begins his new job. Eventually, Jamison attends UCLA as an undergraduate student in psychology and joins one of her professor’s research laboratories. Upon graduation, she continued her education at the university through their doctorate …show more content…
38). The major swing between elation and depression that Jamison experiences is a clear sign of the one necessary symptom of Bipolar I disorder, and these swings do not go away throughout the book. Later on, in describing another mood shift, Jamison says, “my classwork during these galvanized periods seemed very straightforward, and I found examinations, laboratory work, and papers almost absurdly easy” (Jamison, 1995, p. 44) before saying “my mood would crash and my mind again would grind to a halt. I lost all interest in my schoolwork, friends, reading, wandering, or daydreaming” (Jamison, 1995, p. 44). The drastic and immediate mood shift shown here is another case of this swing from elation to depression, as shown in the anhedonia Jamison experiences in the second quote. Another symptom Jamison experiences is racing thoughts, with one instance being described as “My thoughts were so fast that I couldn’t remember the beginning of a sentence halfway through. Fragments of ideas, images, sentences raced around and around in my mind.” (Jamison, 1995, p.
Mr. Jock meets both criterion A and B of a manic episode as he experi...
There are times in life when the intangible and abstract become as concrete as the ground we stand upon. This is the way I felt after reading Susan Perabo’s “The Payoff”. What particularly holds the most significance is the ending of the story. When a young girl peers past an elderly woman’s earthly armor. Through looking beyond, the armor which had been bolstered by the heartbreaking lose of the love of her life.
An individual’s mental well being can greatly affect their character and the way they perceive things. In the novels The Kite Runner and A Separate Peace, the protagonists are boys who are infested by internal conflicts such as insecurities and emotions. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, a boy lets his dad negatively affect his character, causing him to treat those around him in a cynical manner. Likewise, a boy from John Knowles’ A Separate Peace bases his character on whom he wishes to be, letting his unhealthy mental state consume him.
In the magic of the mind author Dr. Elizabeth loftus explains how a witness’s perception of an accident or crime is not always correct because people's memories are often imperfect. “Are we aware of our minds distortions of our past experiences? In most cases, the answer is no.” our minds can change the way we remember what we have seen or heard without realizing it uncertain witnesses “often identify the person who best matches recollection
“Left Neglect…is a real neurological syndrome that occurs due to damage to the right hemisphere of the brain, such as might follow a right-hemisphere stroke” (Genova 323). Lisa Genova, author of “Left Neglected”, explores the bewildering neurological disorder of Left Neglect through the eyes of Sarah Nickerson. Sarah is a multi-tasking champion who holds a prestigious position as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting, is a mother of three kids, and a wife to her husband Bob Nickerson, who also holds a prestigious position at another company. Life for Sarah is hectic, fast paced, and constantly moving. If it isn’t something regarding work, then it’s her children, or other priorities that seem to pile up as Sarah moves through out her life. Her fast paced life comes to a sudden halt, as one day she is apart of a severe car accident. Sarah’s next memory is waking up in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital and learning that she has suffered an injury to her brain that has caused a condition known as Left Neglect, and this is where Sarah’s journey throughout the novel begins.
...ailments concludes in the book Jeanette comes to terms with the belief of some people enjoying life a different way. While learning how to dance between turbulence and order from a very young age their lives took a drastic toll from their father’s affliction. Their nomadic life could have continued in its blissful and whimsical state so long as balance was maintained between the order and turbulence. However, with a mental ailment on the mother’s behalf which rendered her incapable of stability the father’s addiction was the weight holding the family in their downward spiral. Without this chosen means of escape by Rex a different life would have befallen the children of the Wall’s family and while it would never have been ideal or picturesque they would have been able to continue in a happy and whimsical manner.
In the article “Reading and Thought” the author Dwight MacDonald provides criticism and disagreement with Henry Luce’s idea of “functional curiosity”. Luce developed the term “functional curiosity” defining it as an eagerness of people to know the latest news happening around the world. On the other hand, MacDonald concludes that functional curiosity only strengthens reader’s practice in reading rather than in providing invaluable information. He underlines that literature nowadays is deficient and insubstantial since there is no deep meaning in the texts. Modern printed literature is simply being skimmed through by the reader as the reader nowadays tends to avoid too much information resisting thinking in such a way. Because of the new nature of the printed materials, MacDonald considers today’s reading behavior and the way people think as flimsy and indifferent. I agree that our thought has definitively changed since we are paying less time to serious critical thinking losing connections with society and awareness of it.
In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” from The New Brain, written by Richard Restak, Restak makes some very good points on his view of multitasking and modern technology. He argues that multitasking is very inefficient and that our modern technology is making our minds weaker. Multitasking and modern technology is causing people to care too much what other people think of them, to not be able to focus on one topic, and to not be able to think for themselves.
Depression has a major effect on a person life. The accumulation of hidden emotion could cause difficulty in life. The consequences could be irrational thinking, suffering in ceased emotion or lead to a total disaster. In “Horses of the night” by Margaret Laurence and “ Paul’s case” by Willa Cather, both authors introduce the concept of depression. Although both selections offer interesting differences, it is the similarities that are significant.
In the struggle of mind over matter, an individual needs to have courage to use the knowledge that he or she possess. By using the knowledge available to us, we as individuals have the ability to overcome opposing forces in our lives which seem to keep us from progressing (mentally and emotionally), and which can seem larger than life. In Homer's epic The Odyssey, The use of cunning to disguise and deceive and to ultimately overcome the godlike opposition that manifests itself many times throughout the book, and makes Odysseus' return home possible. Without the ability to deceive, Odysseus' brute strength alone would have exhibited a futile display of power in the presence of the gods of Ancient Greece. Much like the lives of individuals, if we do not use our cunning and wit in a most effective manner, and rely on strength instead knowledge, we are destined for a life of failure and/or mediocracy . If Odysseus hadn't had the courage and cunning to return home his destiny would have consisted of spending the rest of his life on an island with Calypso, miserable.
In the article The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, the authors go into great detail of describing the effects of trigger warnings. Using real world examples, Lukianoff and Haidt describes how college students are oversensitive and carried along the school year. The authors explain how this is a negative thing for the college students going into the work force in the future.
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...
Christopher Boone, the protagonist of this novel, has encountered a lot of hardships dealing with people because of his mental disability. One of his biggest problems he faces is his incompetence to decipher between emotions. In order to make out the more complicated emotions, Christopher “...got Siobhan to draw lots of these faces and then write down next to them exactly what they meant.” He keeps this piece of paper in his pocket and uses it as reference when he has difficulty understanding other people’s emotions. “I like dogs” says Christopher, you always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating.” (5.2) He also finds it difficult to follow instructions. Since he is a very logical person he needs the directions to be precise and specific. “And this is because when people tell you what to do it is usually confusing and does not make sense.For example, people often say ‘B...
Describe what evolutionary psychologists mean when they employ the term ‘theory of mind’. Use examples and research studies from Book 1, Chapter 2 to show why this theory is important in evolutionary psychology.
Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and is a rejection of the philosophical theory that mental states are distinct from physical states. Ryle argues that the traditional approach to the relation of mind and body (i.e., the approach which is taken by the philosophy of Descartes) assumes that there is a basic distinction between Mind and Matter. According to Ryle, this assumption is a basic 'category-mistake,' because it attempts to analyze the relation betwen 'mind' and 'body' as if they were terms of the same logical category. Furthermore, Ryle argues that traditional Idealism makes a basic 'category-mistake' by trying to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental reality, and that Materialism makes a basic 'category-mistake' by trying to reduce mental reality to the same status as physical reality.